


the imperfect and the damaged

by DiurnalDays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Art History, M/M, Metaphors, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 14:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15026285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiurnalDays/pseuds/DiurnalDays
Summary: Kintsugi, the display card reads. The Japanese art of mending the imperfect and the damaged to create beautiful works of art.POV Bucky-centric oneshot. Background Stucky.





	the imperfect and the damaged

Sometimes Bucky thinks of himself as an urn, like those in the art museum he had found himself in. There is a cracked, weathered clay urn inside of his body which contains the “soul” of “Bucky”. Outside, the taut muscle and sinew of the Winter Soldier wrap the urn up snugly, keeping the urn in one piece but also trapping “Bucky” in a dense, hot prison. To break the urn and free “Bucky”, Bucky would have to rip the muscles away from the bones of the Winter Soldier and then he doesn’t know what he’ll have left. 

A woman shoots him an odd look from across the gallery. Bucky should really stop leaning in so close to the glass between him and the clay urns that if he moved his eyelash wrong he’d crack the glass. 

Perhaps his super-serum made his eyelashes into spears of vibranium. Bucky wouldn’t be surprised if it did. He’d found that many of his body parts had been turned into weapons against his will. 

He reluctantly peeled himself away from the display case of clay urns and forced his feet to carry him to another display case of fertility figurines. Really, he wasn’t too interested in the art (that was St- that was not Bucky’s speciality), but something about the cracked clay urns had called to him. 

Like a soulmate. 

Bucky knows what that calling is when he ambles into the Japanese ceramics gallery and finds himself staring at a row of black and celadon wares with cracks mended by gold veins. Kintsugi, the display card reads. The Japanese art of mending the imperfect and the damaged to create beautiful works of art.

Bucky has seen enough, throat constricted. He vaults out of the window of the stuffy museum to the street below. 

\-- 

The sun warms the new black and gold plates of his arm, which curls at his side, relaxed yet ready. Though he is not a weapon (not anymore), he had accepted the arm Shuri had forged for him the moment Steve had gently asked Bucky to go on missions with him in service of T’challa so as to repay his hospitality and do some good in the world (just like old times, Steve had promised with a half-smirk and fingers gently carded through Bucky’s hair). As soon as T’challa had accepted Bucky’s request to join Steve on missions T’challa’s younger sister Shuri had pranced out from the woodwork to adjust his arm port for his new prosthesis (both weapon and utility, she had assured him). 

Speaking of Shuri, she had appeared in his villa earlier the same morning to fine-tune his arm and check on him. She’d left behind a few fresh-cut Wakandan lily blooms and a cute Hello Kitty-themed note reminding him to perform the exercises she’d taught him to do with his new arm every few hours, smiley face included. He hadn’t the chance to test out the compartments and functions of the arm yet, but he would soon. Steve had requested his aid in a Wakandan black ops mission in Istanbul and Bucky was due to ship out with Steve, Natasha, and Sam in a few hours. 

Now, though, Bucky uses his arm to gently pick the blooms up by their stems, turning them over to inspect the magenta dots running up their petals. The gold of his arm glows softly in the shadows thrown by the half-closed blinds over the window. 

Gold veins like those running through those black and celadon wares in that art museum years ago.

Bucky - code name White Wolf, given to him half-jokingly half-reverently by Shuri - is both muscle and gold now, mending gold veins threaded through pitch-black vibranium. The clay urn inside of him has long melted and reforged into porcelain, what remained of “Bucky” flowing through the cracks in the Winter Soldier’s bones to create Bucky - two lives reconciled into one. 

Two lives, one spent in service of Steve and another absent of him, merged into one where he and Steve are together, always, flesh and feelings melting together with the hunger of seventy years spent apart. 

Bucky is the beautifully imperfect and the damaged.


End file.
